The Armenian Communities Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is pleased to announce that the Armenian spellchecker for iOS has been released and is available free of charge from the App Store! Within a few months, the Android version will also be made available.

In our continuous efforts to revitalize and strengthen the Armenian language, Nayiriboard — the keyboard-spellchecker for iOS — comes to reinforce the presence of Armenian in the digital world through a tool that makes it easier to write in the language on mobile devices and inside any app—from social media and communication apps like Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger, to productivity apps such as Pages, Notes and beyond.

This revolutionary and indispensable tool has been produced by Nayiri.com and is based on the HySpell engine. In this first version, Nayiriboard supports the traditional Armenian orthography for both branches of the Armenian language — Eastern and Western. It features a 150,000-word vocabulary, resulting in the recognition of over five million word forms. The current keyboard is especially designed for Western Armenian; future releases will also have the option to select from a variety of keyboard layouts and have the option to choose the reformed Armenian orthography.

“We are grateful to the team of developers at Nayiri.com for undertaking this challenging work,” said Razmik Panossian, the Director of the Armenian Communities Department, adding, “it is through the interplay of technology and language that Armenian will stay vibrant, relevant and appealing in the 21st century. The spellchecker program will entice more people to write in Armenian on a daily basis.”